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During the thirteenth century, the cities of Rheims and Laon have known several political crises opposing their middle class to the ecclesiastical authorities – archbishop, bishop and chapter. In these conflicts, excommunication was one of the Church’s major weapons to impose itself on the middle class, but also the expression of a power within the Church itself, at the level of the town, of the province, and possibly of the whole Christendom. The numerous texts written under such circumstances reveal a genuine rherotics of canonic censorship, which defines the power relationships between all the people involved. The promulgation of an excommunication, from its original announcement and the publicity its enforcement required, to the rites connected with its absolution, are as many elements through which the ecclesiastical authority asserted itself in the city.